Getty Images
There's been quite a bit of coverage over the last 24 hours of some Republican lawmakers, most notably Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), saying publicly they're prepared to blow off Grover Norquist's anti-tax "pledge" as part of a larger deal. Before the political world gets too excited, though, it's worth paying attention to the fine print.
A pair of congressional Republicans reiterated their willingness Sunday to violate an anti-tax pledge in order to strike a deal on the "fiscal cliff," echoing Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican who suggested last week that the oath may be outdated.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he was prepared to set aside Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge if Democrats will make an effort to reform entitlements, and Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) suggested the pledge may be out of step in the present economy.
Yes, all of a sudden, Norquist's pledge is losing friends fast. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said last week, "I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge," and the political establishment swooned when Graham proclaimed yesterday, "I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform."
To be sure, Norquist's waning influence is a positive development, as is the larger shift in the debate -- Washington is no longer arguing whether to include more revenue in a debt-reduction deal, but how to include more revenue.
But to characterize Graham's position as some kind of major concession is a mistake. Indeed, while the South Carolinian's position is ever-so-slightly more constructive than some House Republicans', the closer one looks at his approach, the less reasonable it appears.
What he's proposing is Republicans to get what they want on both sides of the budget ledger.
Let's unwrap this a bit. On the one hand, Graham is willing to accept new revenue. Through slightly higher tax rates on millionaires and billionaires? Absolutely not -- Graham specifically proclaimed, "I will not raise tax rates to do it."
So what will the Republican senator tolerate? Mitt Romney's plan. Here's what Graham offered yesterday:
"When you're $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece, and Republicans should put revenue on the table. We're this far in debt. We don't generate enough revenue. Capping deductions will help generate revenue. Raising tax rates will hurt job creation. So I agree with Grover, we shouldn't raise rates, but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can't cap deductions."
In other words, Graham -- being singled out for praise today for being so "reasonable" -- would demand that Bush-era tax rates be left in place for everyone, including the very wealthy, but he'd consider a cap on deductions. As a practical matter, his "concession" is being open to adopting Romney's revenue proposal.
In exchange, Graham expects Democrats to reward Republicans with "structural reforms" to support programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. What kind of "reforms" are they seeking? We don't know -- no one in the Republican Party has been specific about the kind of entitlement cuts they expect to get in a bipartisan deal.
Stepping back, consider the general framework of the proposal we heard yesterday: on the one hand, Republicans would get the tax rates they want. On the other hand, Republicans would also get the entitlement changes they want.
And because Grover Norquist doesn't like it, this is considered the reasonable GOP offer.
Democrats, after a very successful election cycle, are being asked to accept a deal in which Dems concede on tax rates, concede on entitlements, and accept the reward of Romney's revenue plan? This is what passes for bipartisan compromise in late 2012?
Leave a Comment:
Raise taxes - don't raise taxes. Close loopholes to make more loopholes. These are only half of the problem facing America. The other half is management of funds and the men and women of both chambers do not have a friggin clue how to manage money. the Republicans have demonstrated this lack of ability for decades now - and it became more pronounced during the Bush years. If the Republicans had won in 2008 they would have merrily voted for debt ceiling increases right along with their own pay raise. The American citizen cannot expect fiscal responsibility from people who have everything paid for them and therefore have no reason to have a budget, or even stick to that budget. They have none of their skin in the game. Until they do, there won't be any prudent, thoughtful fiscal management ideas and carry-through from either party.
Holding the country hostage, while winning demands, that once obtained allows you take the economy hostage. That’s a plan.
Having a minority of equity-stockholders take control of a solid business, with assets, funded liabilities, and popular products, while winning huge loans against the ownership of those assets and funds, that at once enables you to sell those assets and funds. The plan is to drain the costs from the existing structure; from old management, from employees, from future liabilities, from squeezing resource suppliers. Once this done it is critical to sell the once 'prosperous' business to an obscure municipal pension fund that later discovers that the assets and funds no longer exist and the public does not want the debased and more costly product. The rigged bankruptcy laws allow for the lender to claim all the facility assets, for sale, while the employees, their pensions and their health are FREE to be placed in the open market, if any, for less profit.
Thus the accumulated wealth of the healthy and vibrant well-run company with product success and happy employees is transferred and the company chopped up and sold to the highest bidder (future loan customer?), while all the expenses, health insurance, and retirements that would have been paid from the company's wisely saved assets and investments are transferred to the Government for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The existing system, tax code, and its extreme laws favoring equity-stockholders and financial lenders, simply harvest existing healthy corporations, taking cashing out and leaving the Government to flounder under more and more debt.
The hostage takers (Senate Republicans), are willing to take down healthy corporate America, using the government debt as a cudgel to block suitable reforms against corporate raiders, venture capitalists, chop-shop specialists, illicit banker deals, hedge fund managers. This ironically has been placed beyond the reach of public outrage, wrath and control of the voting public, by the Nation's central law, the Constitution.
A Nation hung by the very rope that supports it. The Constitution gives unfettered power to the Senate to make its own rules unencumbered by review of any sort from the other branches of the government. We are currently in the 'funding times', in utter contrast with 'founding times' and most of the past 200 years. The difference is that those old 'founding times' exist in the imaginations of the American Public, where we imagine a loyalty and a trust of public servants, U.S. Senators, that was based upon electing am accomplished and honorable persons, who had everything to give back to a nation who had given them success. Yes boys and girls, U.S. Senators went to serve the people under the Constitution and to represent their states in their positions in the National government. No boys and girls, U.S. Senators were not elected to subsequently become accomplished and wealthy by bargaining their position for the highest bidder to a gigantic, wealthy, and successful, if not monopoly, corporations.
We are told time and time again, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but few if ever of how that power was obtained. It is not ever granted by divine intervention, power comes to the willing. stroke by stroke closer and closer by those who covet such power. While the Senate comes with 100 members, it not necessary that Senators enter the office with magnanimous or unanimous intentions, in fact that are elected with intentions unknown. The Senate as rogue club needs only a rule that allow the minority to divide the remaining Senate first into halves, and then to side with one part or another in winner take all power play, and like any unruly fraternity to hazed others into submission. The public could see that the minority of members of the Senate can be put in place by States where the influence of corporate monies, knowing full well that the candidate is unqualified by any criteria save the purchased votes of manipulated election. The public could also see that once elected the Senators rise to power is magically except from being a reminder to the preceding corruption.
The result of this too long reminder, is that the Senate is all but run by the jagged edge of minority corruption, the roles of equity-stockholder, hapless management, gullible resistance, and well healed funder, proceeds the buying and the selling of American assets for quick profits, and willingness to trade the entire republic for a currency not all measure in dollars, but power.
The U.S. Senate as grown immune to reform, as it has armed and adjusted itself again new Senators even those with the most wholesale 'founding ideals'. The current U.S. Senate and the next U.S. Senate has grown powerful from its own rules. While the needs for those rules has grown beyond the need for parliamentary order, they have the power to block, the House, the Supreme Court and the Executive and worst of all those rules can block the Senate itself.
It is in the moneyed interest to shut the Senate down, the rules can allow that, if it is in the moneyed interest to have the Senate rule supreme, the rules can allow that. If you think for one moment that in six years that can be changed by the voter, just remember who the Senators are, how they came to elected and how they became qualified by interest, disposition and prior success, and as well how the manipulated the voters into keeping them in office.
Perhaps then you will see that meeting the demands of hostage takers does not stop their lust for power, how that power can grow greater and how much poorer we can be come if it continues, when it continues and after it continues as it will!
Reference: Lincoln's First Inaugural.
So are the Dems going to roll over and play dead once again? I surely hope not.